Boards›Gameplay

Zed is balanced and has been balanced for months

s LessThanThree·7/13/2015, 2:18:40 PM·6 votes·754 views

There comes a time in every scrubs life where they have to embrace the fact that Zed is rife with counterplay and full of easy options to avoid him.

Here is a champion that forces you to play smarter and position better as well as think about your build, yet you shun him and just blame "OP" and choose to life in your own ignorance even though he is not and relies entirely on the users skill and your own skill can outplay him.

Something is only op if it lacks meaningful counterplay. The current meta has not favored Zed, and he has fallen off with only the players actually good at him still playing him, but I'm sure not as often as other meta champions.

I am a long time Viktor main (who gets hard-countered by Zed), but also a Zed main, who's lived through the last 4 patches playing both champs. Yall need to get educated.

Sure hes not fun to lane against, I know from my own experience, but he's by far not OP and by far not without counterplay so instead of coming on forums or whining to your Silver 5 friends about how you got rekt as Annie mid vs Zed and there was "nothing you could do" how about you learn to play against it?

11 Comments

UltraSceptile7/13/2015, 6:22:37 PM3 votes

Funny, everyone here's like "zed isn't fun to play against." I've never had any problem laning against zed.

Everyone always like to talk about how he's safe as a champion AND at the same time is harassing you. If you're laning against zed you should only be taking 1 Q every 10 or so seconds. And that's because he just used his escape. A zed that is really aggressive and pokes you a lot will be shoving the wave while at the same time blowing his escape.

If he's spamming Qs to CS, he's not harassing you. If he's spamming Qs on you, it means he's walking into melee range to CS. If you're getting hit by Qs that aren't from his shadow often you're just trash. He can play safe, he can be aggressive. He can't do both, yet everyone who complains about zed always acts like he can can get perfect CS while killing you while still escaping ganks. Well if he's doing that it's because he's warding so he knows when and when not to harass you with his shadows or when he can or cannot kill you. And that means he's good. If you're better, you should be CSing just as perfectly while not dying to him. If he's better, then he deserved to win lane and kill you. Simple as that.

SmoothBrainIdiot7/13/2015, 2:33:19 PM2 votes

+1

It's the same type of people who don't build tank when they lose or complain about new devourer who complain that Zed is just broken. There is a reason Riot does not look here for any balance opinions.

jDVL20eCYs7/13/2015, 2:35:46 PM1 votes

if get a zed in my team i will report him for troll pick xD

Nameless Voice7/13/2015, 2:41:33 PM1 votes

I'd argue that balanced and well-designed are not the same thing.

I absolutely hate playing against him even when I win in the end.

In my opinion, being badly designed and no fun to play against is far worse than merely being overpowered.

Schenix7/13/2015, 2:59:53 PM1 votes

Itemization can make the difference.

item 3157 item 3140 item 3139

Also, Annie is like a hard counter to Zed from what I glean.

Is Zed balanced? In a way, yes. Is Zed healthy? Perspective. Is Zed badly designed? I actually think his kit is simple, but has so many uses which makes it elegant and well made. Is Zed running on Energy a mistake? Why would anyone play Zed if he was Mana? You would need a kit rework. Does Zed become overpowered consistently in windows of formats? Absolutely. But he also falls off in others.

His kit being simple, is prone to counterplay. It is also a kit that effectively gives the potential to outplay counterplay. But again with the kit, is prone to being baited and has clear windows of power and lack of it.

But with Zed himself, he provides 0 utility to the team other than pure killing and outplaying for them. Most AD champions can split push, but even Yasuo can help a teamfight more by landing a tornado on 3-5 people or ulting multiple. Zed is a blow up on one target (needing an ult most of the time, also relies on the ult for higher outplays), or ranged poke. It's very generic.

As a champion who directly scales with how well the player has mastered Zed, I would argue he is actually a healthy champion and that the design itself is good for emphasizing this. I would also have to acknowledge, that all champions are not like this,so it gives him a slight advantage by being who he is.